Dark Intelligence

by Neal Asher

  I’m beautiful, she thought.

  She was also, she realized, incredibly hungry. Those here must have realized this on some instinctive level even as she did, for they all began backing away, even Morgan.

  No … control.

  Her Golem had arrived at the Glory and entered, and was now positioned on the bridge, while the Nasturtium remained under her mental control. She wanted to get going, and now, but the hunger wouldn’t leave her and she found herself edging towards Morgan and the others.

  No … stop.

  She checked the cargo manifest of the Glory, confirming that it still included eighty-six mindless human beings, with prador thralls installed inside their empty skulls. She sent her instructions. When the captain of that ship questioned the order to shift part of that cargo across to the Caligula, the Golem beside him rested a hand on his shoulder and said, “Snickety, snick.”

  It was enough, and he obeyed.

  BLITE

  Blite had never felt anything like it. The Rose shuddered, and he sensed a sickening twist travelling down its length. It seemed to try and turn him inside out as it passed through him too. He rolled out of his bed, realizing he was floating up above the floor just a microsecond before the grav-plates came back on and dropped him on it.

  “Bollocks,” he said, almost resigned.

  Who was on watch? Brondohohan and Ikbal, though the others would be on the bridge soon enough after that, whatever it was. He struggled to his feet, swaying, still feeling an odd wavering effect from the plates underneath his feet. He then staggered over to his cabin door and out. Chont and Haber were ahead of him, Martina and Greer trotting up the corridor behind.

  “What the hell was that?” asked Greer.

  “I don’t know,” Blite replied.

  “We’re out of U-space,” said Martina.

  He nodded and turned to head after Chont and Haber, only now realizing the truth of her words. The buzz was gone; the perpetual hum and tension of the U-space engine had ceased.

  “There’s something big, black and nasty out there,” said Brond the moment Blite reached the bridge and dropped into his chair. “It’s called the Micheletto’s Garrotte and it’s some sort of modern Polity attack ship.”

  “How did it knock us into the real?” Blite eyed the deadly looking black spike of a vessel shown on the screen.

  “It didn’t,” said Ikbal. “That was something else, sited in a suspiciously regularly shaped asteroid out there. Seems we ran into a USER, because the U-space entry barrier was recently extended to here.” Ikbal looked round from his instruments. “Now we’re surrounded by modern splinter missiles that could U-jump right in here at any moment. They’re all capable of even tracking us through U-space too—that is, if we stood any chance of getting through the USER effect.”

  “So what now?” Blite asked, bracing himself.

  They all knew he wasn’t asking the question of them.

  “The Garrotte AI is being particularly stubborn and aggressive,” Penny Royal whispered. “It seems I am not trusted.”

  Blite sighed with relief that he wasn’t to be reintroduced to his memories, or anyone else’s for that matter, then said, “Oh, really.” He shot a look at the others, just to ensure that they would keep their own comments to themselves.

  “It will be necessary for me to take some action,” the AI added.

  Shit.

  Already, The Rose was filled with a huge tension. Blite reached out towards the console, stop-motion images of his hand tracing the movement. He called up a tactical display to reveal the Garrotte just fifty miles away, while the five splinter missiles surrounded them at a distance of just a mile. His instruments also showed him a U-space storm too fierce for The Rose’s U-space engine to drive through. It would not wane for some time, even if the USER, located on an asteroid just over one light minute away, was shut down.

  “You’re talking to the Garrotte,” he said, phrasing it so it wasn’t quite a question and hoping in some way to prevent or delay Penny Royal from taking “some action.”

  “Yes,” the AI replied, but added no more.

  Blite opened a general Polity com channel, though he imagined the ship out there was listening on every channel he knew about and some more besides.

  “Polity attack ship,” he said. “This is Captain Blite of The Rose.” He paused, trying to find the words. “I have a crew of five people, all of whom are innocent of any capital crime. We are, essentially, hostages of the other resident aboard.” Again the pause. “Who, I have to add, has been innocent of any capital crimes since being aboard and even saved the lives of thousands of people in Carapace City on the Rock Pool.” Yet another pause. “Penny Royal has also returned to me memcordings of crew I lost in a previous encounter with it. I suggest you think very carefully about any actions you might be inclined to take.”

  “Oh goody,” replied the Garrotte AI, “the slow drag of human speech yet again.”

  “Yet again?” Blite enquired, anxious to keep some dialogue going, even though the light inside The Rose now seemed as solid as amber and something was certainly going to happen.

  “Oh yes, I had the pleasure of a chat with one Thorvald Spear. He happens to be inside the ship your supposed kidnapper used to occupy. Do you think Penny Royal has come to claim it back? I would have to be very harsh if that was the case.”

  The Garrotte was babbling—probably this human conversation had been assigned to some insignificant part of its intellect, while the active part concentrated on its main concern.

  “What does Penny Royal say?”

  “Oh lots and very little,” said the Garrotte. “But I cannot allow you or it to approach Masada and this time I’m getting no interference from Amistad. In fact, much to my delight, Penny Royal is considered such a danger that I have been authorized to use my full complement of weapons—if necessary.”

  “And what about us?”

  The tension changed and Blite felt something like a USER surge travel through his body. On his tactical display, one of the surrounding missiles blinked out of existence.

  “The fuck?” said the Garrotte.

  Penny Royal now replayed something, undoubtedly for the benefit of Blite and his crew, since AI-to-AI communication with the Garrotte would have taken a microsecond. It was the voice of a woman, whom Blite just knew was military, and was lecturing to an audience.

  “Legally, we are on dodgy ground,” she said. “In Polity law, we are here in this system under sufferance. We have been given no carte blanche to take any military action out here. By deploying a USER here we are actually infringing on the law concerning ‘deliberate isolation of autochthons’—even though the Weaver is the only sentient alien here.”

  “I think you know better than that,” said the Garrotte. “And where’s my fucking missile?”

  “I do,” hissed Penny Royal.

  The lecturer now continued, “Polity AIs make it up as they go along; choosing the laws to best suit their own needs or purposes. However, until the laws are changed, we are still in infringement.”

  It occurred to Blite that Penny Royal was buying time by using recorded human speech, but surely this must have occurred to the attack ship AI? Probably, but it was equally as likely to be waiting for Penny Royal to act, before responding itself. The captain gazed at the time display at the bottom of his screen, and counted down the seconds since the missile disappeared.

  “The Weaver hasn’t actually complained,” said the Garrotte, “nor has it instructed us not to take any military action. As for this ‘isolation of autochthons,’ you seem to have dragged that out of the mists of time … what exactly are we isolating the Weaver from? Do you think it might want to cosy up to the prador?”

  “You won’t know until such a time as you cease isolating it,” replied Penny Royal, obviously not finding a suitable recording to use. “It could be that it has its own communication routes and that some of those you stop are here by invitation.”

  “L
ike you?”

  A short pause ensued, then came a flash from a massive explosion just over one light minute away. This was followed by a further outpouring of x-rays as a singularity began to eat its surrounding asteroid.

  “I thought so,” said the Garrotte. “Time to take the gloves off.”

  Blite grabbed his safety harness and pulled it across as the tension within his ship ramped up to an unbearable level. The Rose shuddered, the sound of its U-space engine labouring reached them, and they submerged into that continuum. The ship now crashed and appeared to twist all around them, error codes began filling the surrounding screens and a breach klaxon began to sound. He heard Haber scream and bit down on a scream himself as he found himself gazing into something impossible for his mind to accept. Then, with another shuddering crash, they were out of it again. Through the main screen Blite now saw the planet Masada. A microsecond later his tactical display showed U-signatures all around them, one of them oscillating weirdly and spearing towards them. A massive flare ignited outside—the main screen blanking to black safety. The Rose jerked as if going over a subspace pot-hole. Haber and Chont shot backwards across the bridge and crashed into the rear wall. Greer was clinging with heavy-worlder strength to the base of Brond’s chair with one arm, her other arm wrapped tightly around Martina.

  Another explosion ensued, massive, megaton range like the last. Blite’s tactical display showed this spreading as it hit their curved hard-field, the impact shock driving The Rose a hundred miles from its previous position. Without the stabilizing effect of internal grav, and another force employed by Penny Royal causing the very air to resemble amber, they would all have been dripping smears on the ship’s bulkheads. Blite smelled smoke then heard the worst sound a space man could hear: the roar of air escaping into vacuum. A particle beam stabbed and probed out there, blue shot through with criss-crossing spirals of black. Tracing it back to its source, he could now make out the Micheletto’s Garrotte. This beam ground across the ship’s hardfield like a drill skittering on hard metal and now The Rose began shuddering.

  “I think we’ve had it!” someone shouted over the roar. Blite wasn’t sure who had spoken, but had to agree. Penny Royal had taken on something advanced and lethal here and might well suffer a defeat. Maybe the AI could survive that, but Blite suspected he and his crew would not.

  Then it all stopped.

  The beam winked out and there were no more explosions. The amber loosened and flowed, allowing the smoke to dissipate into vent fans running at full speed, while the sound of air escaping ceased at once.

  “Are we dead?” asked Ikbal, and now Blite realized it was him who had spoken before.

  “Not yet,” Brond replied.

  Those two words, Blite felt, covered their entire situation since last leaving Masada—which was now uncomfortably close. They waited, wondering what the hell was going on. Finally a voice issued from the speaker.

  “You have got to be fucking kidding me,” said the Garrotte AI.

  “Like I said,” Penny Royal replied. “Some are here by invitation.”

  SPEAR

  Gloria Markham was an attractive woman of indeterminate age. If she’d had no Polity anti-ageing treatments or cosmetic work, and just been subject to the medical tech of this world before Polity intervention, I would have put her age at about thirty, solstan. However, I knew that many had availed themselves of Polity medical tech since intervention and, judging by another aspect of her, she had too. She wore a tight clinging skirt and an undercut top—a particular fashion affectation found only here. The blue fabric clung to her upper arms and shoulders and the tight ring collar was high on her throat. The material below that clung to her breasts, but didn’t reach down to cover them completely. Below them a triangular hole had been cut, revealing their underside, while the point of the triangle terminated at her belly-button. The centre of this cut-away section revealed a circular scar a couple of inches across, ridged around its circumference with mauve and black scar tissue. The top was designed to reveal the scar left by a scole—an aphid-like creature. This bio-engineered parasite had enabled humans to survive on this oxygen-depleted world. Really, if she hadn’t used Polity medical technology to negate the effects of the scole on the human body, even after it was removed, she would have looked about eighty now, or been dead.

  “This is about my mother,” she said, after greeting me with that, “I’ve been expecting you.”

  “It is?” I said.

  “It is,” she replied, giving me a head-to-foot inspection that made me feel quite uncomfortable, before glancing at Riss and frowning. Then she stepped past us to lock the shop door.

  “My mother was a rebel,” she explained, as she led us through an arch into her cramped quarters to the rear. “She fought the Theocracy for thirty years and that battle changed her. She started to enjoy the killing a little too much as she grew tired of the cause but powerful within it. She ended up becoming dictatorial and accumulated wealth for her own ends. By the time she abandoned the cause she was as hated and feared by those within it as those we were fighting, but I loved her.” She gestured me to an uncomfortable-looking stool, gazed at Riss again, now as if she disapproved, then headed over to a sideboard crowded with bottles.

  “So you were a rebel too,” I suggested, deciding just to go with this as I sat down.

  “I was, though if you talk to any Masadan now they’ll tell you they were freedom fighters too. The number of supposed rebels here has increased a hundredfold, while the number of ex-pond workers has diminished almost to zero.” Her smile was twisted and sad as she turned round, then she banished it and held up a bottle and two glasses. “Wine?” she enquired, a little too brightly.

  “Certainly,” I replied, if it would put her at her ease, going on. “So she bought passage off-world on a smuggler’s ship,” I said. “To the Graveyard.”

  “How can you know that?” She sat in the chair on the other side of a low polished obsidian table, clinked down the glasses and poured.

  “Call it an educated guess.”

  She frowned, shook her head in puzzlement, then continued, “She stayed with the smugglers for eight solstan years, but eventually they ousted her when she tried to strangle the smuggler captain. She then applied her skills to more lucrative work, more suited to her skills. I don’t know how many contracts she carried out, but they numbered into the hundreds.”

  “Contracts?” Riss enquired from a thick hand-woven rug where she’d coiled herself.

  “She was a killer—I told you. She hunted and killed people. Her past turned her into what she was. The Theocracy made her, just like it made many who are in the Tidy Squad even now.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “She was eventually hired for a hit that killed her?”

  “Yes.” Gloria nodded an affirmative. “I researched all this many years ago—compiled all the data … She was hired by a big salvage operator in the Graveyard, one John Hobbs. He provided her with weaponry and expertise, promising a fortune in diamond slate if she killed something that had destroyed one of his ships and slaughtered its crew.”

  “Penny Royal,” said Riss.

  During an uncomfortable pause I tried the wine. It was a deep blood-red and very good. Only as I sipped it did I remember that they grew grape trees here and guessed this must be a local product.

  Gloria gave a tight nod. “My mother hunted the rogue AI for decades and irritated it enough for it to send one of its Golem after her, which she managed to destroy. Eventually she found the location of its planetoid and went there in a converted prador kamikaze with a crust-breaker rocket.” She sat back and crossed her legs, took a large gulp from her glass and fixed her gaze on me. I was aware that she was looking for something from me, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I was too busy remembering the derelict kamikaze I’d seen out by that planetoid and remembering my own plan to bomb Penny Royal. Obviously that initial attempt had failed and I wondered how likely it was that my efforts would have succe
eded.

  “What happened then?” I asked, returning to the moment.

  “I don’t know,” Gloria smiled tightly, “but one day I intend to ask her.”

  “So Penny Royal returned her,” said Riss, just a step ahead of me.

  Gloria nodded and stood up. Facing me she unnecessarily straightened out her clothing, then paused to give me a lingering look before turning abruptly. She walked to a wall crammed with old still pictures and framed pieces of screen fabric running old scenes. She pushed one of these aside—one cycling a moving image of a woman similar in appearance to Gloria herself, presumably her mother. This revealed an inset hand-safe, which she opened. Inside rested a small box made of polished tricone shell. She took this out and returned to her seat, opening the box on the table.

  “My mother, Renata Markham,” she explained, looking up and meeting my gaze very directly. I started to get some intimation of the undercurrents here and glanced down at my nascuff. I realized that shutting down one’s libido also shuts down sensitivity to a particular kind of body language.

  The ruby cylinder resting in its wool packing was smaller than the one Sylac had made for me, being of the standard kind that could be purchased now. So it was of Polity manufacture? No, of course not—Penny Royal had just made it easily accessible by standard methods. I imagined that Renata Markham had resided in some other esoteric storage before the AI loaded her to this jewel and brought it here.

  “So tell me about the visit you received,” I said.

  “I don’t remember the words,” she said. “It came in the night … I heard a sound in the shop and went out to investigate. The front windows were black and there was Penny Royal hovering just below the ceiling—a ball of black spines. I recognized it at once since it’s been on many news reports …”

  “Then?” Riss prompted.

  “I don’t remember the words, as I said. But it talked to me somehow. A ruby memplant rested on my counter, larger than this one. I was to put it in a brooch setting and display it, but I couldn’t allow anyone to buy it. Eventually someone would recognize it for what it was and some representative of the Polity would be along to claim it. I asked why I should do this for the creature that killed my mother—whereupon I felt something in my hand, opened it, and found this.” She stabbed a finger at the memplant. “I had this one checked and my mother’s mind was identified inside, so I did as I was told.” She now fell silent, staring at the object on the tabletop.